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Or something. A bit out of date, but via the terrific Marianne Levy, the concept of Real Age. Mine is within a year of my actual age (or what, up until now, I was just calling my ‘age’ – how foolish I was back then). I have absolutely no idea what this means, except that it was a fun way to pass an idle few minutes.

I sometimes wonder, if I stayed at home on Mondays and just frittered the day away, if Tuesdays at work would then actually turn out to be productive. I suspect they actually would – against all common sense. There’s something about the water on Mondays.

You, our dear readers, occupy at least some of our thoughts while writing entries. Perhaps ten percent, on a bad day; as much as ninety on a sun-shining, birds-singing day. Today is not one of those days – dreary, the sky the colour of bald linoleum – but I thought I’d buck the winter trend by thinking about what is important to you.

The answers, gathered scientifically by looking at what people were searching for when they found the site, is that you are interested in the Uncertainty Division, and you are interested in porn. Specifically Harry Potter porn.

In fact, you’re more interested in Harry Potter porn than in us (137 hits to 128), providing that we assume “Harry Potter porn” and “Hermione porn” are all really after the same thing. I certainly hope that no one came here looking for “Hagrid porn”; for a start, they’d have been sorely disappointed, and for a second they’re just sick.

Anyway, I’d just like to let you know that we’ve taken on board your interests. However we can’t act further until we know what sort of porn you want Ms Grainger to perform. We’ll be watching the search referrals carefully – as well as looking out for the most popular person to portray Hermione in this new venture. Currently the front runner is James Lark, but Jeff Goldblum isn’t far behind, with a small but dedicated contingent seemingly interested in a Hermione/The Fly crossover …

Last night I stayed up to watch Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, and decided that it is an extraordinarily odd film.

For a film set in a WW2 Japanese PoW camp it captures the mid-1980s astonishingly well (ever wondered why David Lean didn’t opt for an 80s Japanese soft pop soundtrack to The Bridge on the River Kwai…?) The story meanders along aimlessly like a Ben Brafman-led improvised narrative crossbred with the Gay Samurai revue. The Japanese characters are marginally less plausible than Andrew Ormerod’s AEME character Mr Ocinowa (who was, I should point out, a puppet); David Bowie gives a mannered performance (though it’s not nearly as awful as Phil Stott would have you believe); Tom Conti, on the other hand, is rather good.

But it’s all terribly uninvolving, until quite some way into the film a beautifully still and bravely lengthy single shot of Tom Conti in solitary confinement allows his performance to grip the film without interruption. We then cut to Bowie, also in confinement, leading into a surreal flashback sequence where the word “mannered” ceases to be adequate to describe what Bowie’s doing – though for a 30-something he is disturbingly persuasive as a public schoolboy. And this subplot, involving Bowie’s younger brother, is strangely haunting and powerful.

But it’s all very odd. Worth losing sleep for, I think – but very odd.

The Evening Standard (which I don’t buy, but which has a tendency of being full of interesting-looking letters while I’m buying lunch) has devoted its front page to telling us how Oona King, MP for bits of London where you can get a blowjob only slightly more easily than cocaine, was offered cash for sex while an assistant at the European Parliament.

Most of the page is spent wittering on about this in tones of mild disgust (whether at the MEP in question, or Ms King herself, was somewhat unclear from a cursory glance, but I’ll assume they’re shocked at the offer), waiting until the last column to reveal that he offered to pay out of his cost allowance. Which, as far as I understand, means he was offering to defraud the European Parliament for a bit of nookie. I don’t want to belittle people who are unjustly treated like whores, but isn’t fraud serious enough to get a little higher up? Perhaps MEP’s fiddling their expenses is just too common these days, although doing it to fiddle your assistant isn’t something I’ve heard before.

The Scotsman also covers it, citing an article by Ms King in the Daily Mirror (which I’ll let pass). They print some of her words, which make interesting reading:

“People complain that with all-women shortlists you end up with mediocre candidates,” she said. “But, my God, has nobody noticed that the Commons is stuffed with mediocre men? That’s because the system has effectively put forward all-men shortlists for 500 years or more.”

If the Commons is stuffed with mediocre men (something I’m not convinced about, but never mind) then most of them are Labour. The total number of ministers is large enough to be a reasonable sample of the House of Commons, so a fair number of them must be mediocre men as well. Which perhaps isn’t quite what she meant. But what really gets me is the use of the word ‘effectively’ in that last sentence – I wish she’d just come out and say that the system favours men. And that “500 years or more” – parliament extends back, in a broken and somewhat jittery line, to the thirteenth century: is she saying that corrupt male primacy had probably disappeared by the nineteenth century? The first woman MP was elected in late 1918, but did not take her seat; the first who did wasn’t until nearly a year later. It’s a horribly misleading statement – which perhaps explains why Mirror readers are so horribly misled.

The Scotsman is also notable for using reported speech to present something it really could have fact-checked for itself:

Ms King said that the record 120 female MPs elected to Parliament in 1997 made up more than half of the total of 239 women who had ever been MPs up to that point.

Had they bothered to check, they might have pointed out that of those female MPs, a whopping fifty were defending their seats in 1997. So only seventy or so new female MPs were elected.

But we’ll accept her numbers; it would be churlish to argue over points of mathematics. Now: who’s in favour of declaring Disraeli a girl to make that an even half?

After reading of James’ diocesal publicity (see below), I decided to see if Google knew of any good photos of me. It’s unlikely, given that very few photos of me have found their way onto the Internetweb – but you never know, so I thought I’d give it a try.

The first page of results is somewhat perplexing. Photos of myself, James and the two Andrews (presumably missing Phil, Ali, Susie and Mary – who are also featured on this site – because they’ve only been up for a mere six months, lazy Google) jostle for position with:

• Harry Porter (this is actually an easier way of finding a photo of Harry than by putting his name into Google – because many people, it seems, can’t spell Harry Potter)
• The logo of a band I was in at university
• The Islamic Studies Library at McGill University, Canada
• Assassination Science, a book on JFK’s murder
• A red square called “blank”
• A banner for the historical archives of the Civil War in the Virginia Historical Society
• A banner for the Cinco de Mayo Fiesta

The last three are most amazing, because they seem to appear on pages that contain neither “James” nor “Aylett”. Google, it seems, is nothing if not unpredictable. Which isn’t really what I want from Google, to be honest.

Hmm. Fans may be interested to see that there’s a rather scary picture of me in the Ely Ensign this month.

Almost all of the facts in the article are erroneous, as is the photograph caption “James Lark performs on stage for The Uncertainty Division theatre company”. A better caption might have been “James Lark – a poor man’s Alan Rickman”. And such an alarming photo also seems rather at odds with the words right next to it – it’s put me off Church of England pensions, at any rate.

Being a wee bit exhausted yesterday evening, I collapsed on the sofa in front of The Smoking Room, a sitcom I am happy to say I have not had a chance to see before.

Predictable, poorly written, poorly acted, poorly paced, populated with unconvincing characters, yet with a distressing absence of funny lines, unoriginal, derivative, infantile and utterly unengaging.

Of course, sitcoms can get away with all of those things now by electing not to have a laughter track, excusing the paucity of jokes with pretentions towards dramatic significance like The Royle Family or delusions of being trendy and new like The Office.

Or maybe there is a laughter track, there just weren’t any places for people to laugh.

In any case, after twenty minutes I’d had enough, so I switched it off and went to bed.

It’s enough to make one long for an episode of Friends. (I can’t believe I just typed that.)

I reckon they’re in his beard.

Well, he has a beer, and (somewhat less excitingly) a “castle” (or what the English, more accurately, might call “a house”, or perhaps simply “ours”).

He also appears to have a ship. I particularly like the lifelike rendition of its demise at the bottom of that page.

I have just discovered that there is a Saint Fagan.

Unfortunately, the usually brilliant Catholic Forum Index of Saints does not include any reference to him (or her), so I have been unable to ascertain whether he/she is in fact the Patron Saint of Jewish Stereotypes.

(Although Jewish stereotypes surely need a Patron Saint, the closest the index gets to Jews is Jesuits, and the letters “ster” only bring up “sterility” – the Patron Saint against it, that is, not for it. Casilda of Toledo seems a pretty safe bet if you’re sterile.)

If anyone knows anything about Saint Fagan, please get in touch. Otherwise I shall undoubtedly be sending him/her my prayers next time I’m appearing in Fiddler on the Roof.